Minister Of ATR Ensures Identification Of Ulayat Land Throughout Indonesia

JAKARTA - Minister of Agrarian Affairs and Spatial Planning/Head of the National Land Agency (ATR/BPN) Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono (AHY) ensures that he will continue to inventory and record all customary lands throughout Indonesia.

"If it is clear that it is clean and clear, after that we can only issue the status, especially the right to land management for the indigenous legal community," AHY said as quoted by ANTARA, Wednesday, July 25.

According to him, the existence of customary law communities is a very important issue because it is not only talking about the issue of justice and welfare, it is also closely related to politics, law, and social.

"So the essence is how this indigenous law community can get their rights, be protected, and also the land can have economic value, productive for improving their welfare," said the Minister of ATR/BPN.

The Ministry of ATR/BPN is committed to accelerating the registration of 3.2 million hectares of customary land for around 3,000 indigenous law communities spread across 16 provinces in Indonesia that have been inventoried.

He mentioned that the 16 provinces where customary land has been inventoried and identified include West Sumatra, Central Kalimantan, Bali, NTT, West Papua, Papua, North Sumatra, Central Sulawesi, Aceh, Riau Islands, Riau, Jambi, South Sumatra, West Kalimantan, East Kalimantan, and South Kalimantan.

This is in line with the issuance of the Regulation of the Minister of ATR/Head of BPN Number 14 of 2024 concerning the Implementation of Land Administration and Land Registration for the Rights of the Indigenous Community of Law.

"This (registration of customary land, ed) is not a simple problem because we know that the lands in these various regions also already have their respective designations, but we also hope that the government will always be present to ensure that the People of Indigenous Law are also protected, guaranteed their rights," said AHY.

The Minister of ATR/BPN also appreciated the steps taken by the Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs (Menko Polhukam) Hadi Tjahjanto to coordinate various parties in one forum to discuss how to equalize regulations in solving customary legal land problems.

Meanwhile, Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs Hadi Tjahjanto said that joint steps were needed as an effort to accelerate the registration of customary lands, starting from coordination and synchronization of the implementation of cross-ministerial regulations.

Then, socialization together with various cross-ministerial regulations including with indigenous law communities, updating data and synchronization of data regarding the recognition status of customary legal communities, as well as coordination and synchronization of the determination of the location of joint pilot projects.

"So where is the place, where is the location, we can find out together and we will carry out an inventory and identification," said Hadi.